The web browser has been the dominant thin client, now rich client, for almost two decades, but can it compete with a new thin client that makes better technical choices and avoids the glacial standards process? I don't think so, as the current web technology stack of HTML/Javascript/Flash has accumulated so many bad decisions over the years that it's ripe for a clean sheet redesign to wipe it out.

Completely agree. The big problem with the web is that the W3C blows. We need a process that doesn't take 5-10 years to come up with a standards recommendation.

Semantic elements, web workers, canvas, border-radius, gradient, and column-layout solve most of the things that are irritations with writing for the web right now. Unfortunately, it is going to take another five years or so before this spec gets out the door, and people can start working on the next list of annoyances.

I think every platform that evolves and adapts will be very hard to beat/replace. And it seems open standards and platforms are inherently better at this than some grand brainchild of some company/single developer.

But there are some use cases where HTML/JS won't work well that is why Google is working on native client.